
Cartographic Perspectives, Number 100, FORTHCOMING Visual Storytelling with Maps – Song et al. | 11
their narrative and enhance their story, spatialized stories
designed by cartographers traditionally were contained
within the margins of a single printed map or unfolded
through an atlas-like sequence of bound maps (Ormeling
1995). In the following, we use story to describe an account
of specic events, places, and people, and narrative to de-
scribe the structure and presentation of this content that
shapes the meaning of the story (Pearce 2008).
Arguably, both maps and stories are more accessible and
inuential today than ever due to pervasive computing,
innovations in new media, and advancing geoweb tech-
nologies (Haklay, Singleton, and Parker 2008; Sui and
Goodchild 2011; Sieber et al. 2016; Young, Hermida,
and Fulda 2018). Unsurprisingly, narrative and storytell-
ing have garnered substantial research attention at the
intersection of cartography, geography, and GIScience
(e.g., Elwood 2006; Pearce 2009; Phillips 2012; Caquard
2013) and increasingly are topics of inquiry in related, vi-
sual-centric elds such as information visualization and
visual analytics (e.g., Gershon and Page 2001; Eccles et
al. 2008; Ma et al. 2012; Kosara and Mackinlay 2013).
Professionally, the use of maps and graphics for storytell-
ing has become a dening trait of data journalism, or news
stories supplemented and even generated by analysis and
presentation of digital information (Gray, Chambers, and
Bounegru 2012). While journalists have a long history of
using data-driven maps as evidence in their news reports
(Monmonier 1989), many news organizations are explor-
ing novel narrative structures and design strategies as they
transition from a primarily print to a primarily digital me-
dium (Wallace 2016; Cairo 2017). In the following, we
adopt a broad denition of visual storytelling as the com-
munication of stories through illustrations, graphics, im-
agery, and video instead of or in addition to oral, written,
and audio formats (for a review of storytelling visualiza-
tions, see Segel and Heer 2010).
Despite both scholarly and practical advancement in the
history, application, and critique of narrative and story
in cartography and related elds, there remains relatively
limited empirical research on the intentional design of vi-
sual stories, particularly on map-based strategies and tech-
niques, and the subsequent interpretation of these designs
by their audiences. We addressed this gap through an em-
pirical study providing the rst assessment of four emerg-
ing design considerations for visual storytelling with maps:
story map themes and their constituent narrative elements,
visual storytelling genres, visual storytelling tropes, and
individual audience dierences. Specically, we asked:
1. What is the inuence of story map themes and their
constituent narrative elements on the audience’s
retention, comprehension, and reaction? Visual
stories covering dierent kinds of topics, or story
themes, still can share design similarities based
on the underlying narrative structure. A three-act
narrative—dating to Aristotle’s Poetics (ca. 335
BCE) and commonly adopted in play- and screen-
writing—comprises a set-up (Act 1), a conict/
confrontation (Act 2), and a resolution (Act 3) to
give the story a beginning, middle, and ending.
Each act includes recurring narrative elements
paced to build suspense through rising action and
then tie up loose threads through falling action.
e elements of a three-act narrative can inform
the selected sequence of maps and graphics for
a visual story, enforcing continuity to produce
a linear reading of inherently non-linear, often
two-dimensional, geographic information. For
our research, we designed two map-based visual
stories on timely topics seen in US media outlets,
using a consistent three-act narrative structure and
similar constituent narrative elements: the rst
about the inuence of US presidential campaign
donations on election results and a second about
the inuence of US coastal sea-level rise on climate
change vulnerability.
2. What is the inuence of visual storytelling genres
on the audience’s retention, comprehension, and re-
action? Broadly, a genre is a category of literature,
music, or other form of artistic expression that ex-
hibits similarity in structural and stylistic elements
(see Cartwright [1999] for the rst reference to
genres related to storytelling in cartography). Our
prior work has extended Segel and Heer (2010)
to identify seven visual storytelling genres made
possible by developments in pervasive comput-
ing, new media, and geoweb technologies (Roth
2021). ese genres dier by the visual or inter-
active techniques they use to enforce continuity of
elements in the narrative sequence. In the research
we present here, we examined dierences in the
audience’s retention, comprehension, and reaction
between two visual storytelling genres: longform
infographics and dynamic slideshows.